National School Museum 1941

Historical heritage

The 1941National School Museum Project has been included in the upgrading of the historical legacy kept at INDIRE. Thousands of documents relating to the world of school and education are now available for consultation in multimedia formats.

Indire’s historical archive keeps a rich and quite particular19th-20th century documentary legacy which makes it one of the few archives in Italy specialising in the collection and valorisation of documentary material of historical/educational interest.
As a result of the numerous institutional transformations that have taken place over eighty years of uninterrupted work, the Institute’s historical archive has some gaps. The documentation relating to the work of its institutional antecedents (i.e., the National School Museum, the National Teaching Museum, the Centre for Teaching Studies and Documentation, and the Library for Pedagogical Documentation) was mostly lost in the wake of the 1966 flood, and also because of a thoughtless decision when clearing out the archive.

Nevertheless, Indire preserves documentary legacy of great historical importance, consisting of reservesoutside the Institute’s sphere of interest, but closely connected to the pedagogical matters that distinguish it.